* George Cruikshank never felt the pinch of poverty. His family, of which his careful mother was the head, was never in want. It was a plain household, much disturbed, it must be said, by the intemperate habits of the father, as well as of the two sons, who were boisterous and bibulous young men who fell into scores of scrapes; but bed and board were always easily at command; and George made money enough for his pleasures even when he was drawing wood-blocks for Hone at ten shillings and sixpence each. He could execute two or three in the course of a day. By no such gentle operation of hair-dressing has Cruikshank lived. Time was (we are told so in print) when for a picture with thirty heads in it, he was paid three guineas--a poor week’s pittance truly, and a dire week’s labour. We make no doubt that the same labour would at present * bring him twenty times the sum; but whether it be ill paid or well, what labour has Mr. Cruikshank’s been, and week by week, for thirty years, to produce something new--some smiling offspring of painful labour, quite independent and distinct from its ten thousand jovial brethren; in what hours of sorrow and ill-health to be told by the world, ‘Make us laugh, or you starve--give us fresh fun; we have eaten up the old, and are hungry!’ And all this has he been obliged to do--to wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want; often, certainly, from ill-health and depression--to keep the fire of his brain perpetually alight, for the greedy public will give it no leisure to cool. This has he done, and done well.” More than forty years ago Thackeray was astonished at the many years of labour already performed by this “indefatigable man,” and exclaimed, “What amazing energetic fecundity do we find in him!” The author of “Vanity Fair” was not often carried away by his emotion, but in the presence of the fire of his friend’s genius he warmed to an unwonted heat. “He has told a thousand new truths in as many strange and fascinating ways; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of people; he has never used his wit dishonestly; he has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome nature, caused a single painful or guilty blush.” * This passage is extracted from an article on Cruikshank written by Thackeray, in the _Westminster Review_ (1840); an article to which he frequently referred as having given great pleasure in the writing.